UK transport secretary Chris Grayling says a new runway planned at London鈥檚 Heathrow Airport will not meaningfully increase carbon emissions, despite upping the number of flights. There鈥檚 only one explanation: Grayling鈥檚 favourite author must be Douglas Adams.
In sci-fi series The Hitchhiker鈥檚 Guide to the Galaxy, Adams creates something called the Somebody Else鈥檚 Problem (SEP) field, which enables people to simply ignore what they don鈥檛 want to see. Grayling isn鈥檛 alone in deploying one 鈥� internationally, the top current user is Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who signed up to the Paris Agreement on reducing carbon emissions with one hand and is backing one of the world鈥檚 largest coal mines with the other.
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There are myriad ways to meet a carbon budget, whether those laid down for the UK under the Climate Change Act or global ones determined by climate science. The knee-jerk reaction for a decision maker is to let it be Somebody Else鈥檚 Problem: the energy minister holds back on closing coal-fired power stations; the treasury decides not to prioritise energy efficiency; the transport minister green-lights a new runway. Other countries should close their mines, not us. Somebody else can do it.
Event:
In reality, as observed by the UK government鈥檚 own advisory body, the Committee on Climate Change, there is no plan for constraining carbon emissions from the new Heathrow runway. The government just hopes it will happen.
We have vague assertions about a new and very modest offsetting scheme agreed under the International Civil Aviation Organization. We have an assumption that by 2030 there will be a 鈥溾�� 鈥� a vision that history renders as unrealistic as Adams鈥檚 bizarre sci-fi vision.
Where鈥檚 the plan?
Grayling deployed the SEP field on air pollution too, arguing that a new runway would reduce emissions because travelling to and from the airport will become cleaner. But this depends on more than half of London drivers using electric cars within a decade, which isn鈥檛 going to happen without a whole new raft of policymaking by鈥� er鈥� Chris Grayling. So where is it?
As things stand, greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft could make up half the UK鈥檚 carbon budget by 2050 鈥� meaning tougher cuts for all other economic sectors, at a considerable and as yet uncalculated cost to the overall economy.
Carbon budgets have an inexorable logic. There is a finite emissions space. Logically, the government ought to accompany every decision that increases emissions from one sector with a parallel announcement on how it will cut them聽faster in others. And because the Committee on Climate Change finds the optimum path for reducing emissions across the overall economy, the government ought logically to calculate the overall economic impact of diverging from the committee鈥檚 recommended trajectory every time it does so.
Cutting emissions, whether nationally or globally, requires coordinated action. A new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point makes little sense on its own, but nuclear plus electric vehicles plus a smart grid does. The sure way to make a hash of both the economy and the climate system is to let every sector and every minister make carbon cuts Somebody Else鈥檚 Problem; but that is exactly what the government has done.
